Disney only had to lose a couple hundred million dollars — again! — on a stinker of a badly written, lazily directed, and barely acted franchise film before finally deciding it's time to take a break.
As you're probably already aware, "The Marvels" just enjoyed the worst-ever opening for a Disney Marvel movie, crashing and burning on release. Disney has tried to cover up its mess as best it can, but there's no hiding the stink of yet another box office failure. Overall, Disney is estimated to have lost nearly ONE BILLION DOLLARS on four flops this year — and that's before "The Marvels" and its $300-plus-million budget.
As a result, and thank goodness for small mercies, we'll only get one new Marvel movie next year. The Hollywood Reporter's sources told the paper this week that Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) chief Kevin Feige and his team need "time to take stock of their theatrical tentpoles" and are temporarily shelving two of next year's three MCU releases.
"Captain America: New World Order" is pushed back to 2025 to shoot new material. One anonymous source who claimed to have seen a test screening said the movie is overtly political and features a Donald Trump-esque villain and allusions to January 6. The revamped movie's five months (!!!) of reshoots may or may not remove those elements.
Also getting delayed until '25 is "Thunderbolts," featuring two second-string Avengers characters played by Sebastian Stan and Florence Pugh. It took me a moment to remember who the hell it was Pugh ever played in a Marvel movie, but then it finally hit me: "She played what's-her-name who was the sister or maybe assassin friend of Black Widow. I loved her!"
Surviving Feige's "taking stock" timeout is "Deadpool 3." But that one barely counts as an MCU movie. The first two Deadpool movies were produced by 20th Century Fox and had zero connection with the Avengers storyline that began with 2008's "Iron Man." Now that Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool is living in the Mouse House, the new flick will reportedly shoehorn Hugh Jackman's Logan/Wolverine into a multiverse plot that will serve as a Grand Unification Theory for getting the Avengers, Deadpool, and X-Men operating in a single universe.
That's an awful lot to put on the shoulders of a wisecracking mercenary like Deadpool, but maybe somehow it won't suck.
The MCU's multiverse of problems spans much wider than confused legal rights over which studio owned which characters when and how to finally bring them all together. Although broad, their problems can be summed up with one word: ENOUGH.
There's a thing I keep telling Hollywood and, when I say, "telling Hollywood," what I mean is, "Middle-aged man shouts at clouds."
The thing is this: When you've told the story, stop telling it.
With 2019's "Avengers: Endgame," the Avengers' story had been told. Tony got to rest, Cap found happiness, Natasha found peace (if only in death), Thor redeemed his fatal error, Clint got his family back, and Bruce and the Hulk became one. In the process, they saved the universe and defeated nemesis Thanos with his own weapon.
The end. Fini. Das Ende.
It was time to give the interweaving, overlapping Marvel Cinematic Universe a rest. Maybe produce the occasional one-off — with a sharp eye on entertainment value — but let fans savor the original 23-movie story without the immediate pressure of Yet More Content.
ASIDE: Correct me if I'm wrong on this but "Endgame" was also where brief glimpses of Wokeness began to infect the MCU. There was that semi-cringey Girl Power moment during the final battle, with one female hero after another passing along the Thanos Power McGuffin to keep it out of his reach. There was also the new Bruce/Hulk combo. I thought at first that the writers were just trying something new with the Hulk, an admittedly one-dimensional character. How much can you really do with "Hulk smash!" in movie after movie? But after watching Disney destroy Han, Luke, and Indy, the Bruce/Hulk combo was their way of diluting the Hulk with too much of nerdy, low-T Bruce.
Disney did the opposite of that, turning the Yet More Content amplifier up to 11 and assaulting viewers with one crappy TV series and Avengers crew wanna-be after another.
Next year — the year Disney has finally scaled back its franchise-destroying ambitions — is the fifth anniversary of Endgame. That would have been the perfect time to bring back a rested MCU with new heroes and villains. Instead, audiences will spend the next five years trying to forget abominations like Ant-Man 3, Dr. Strange 2, and The Eternals 1 (And Only).
We need a long-ish break from the MCU, and Disney needs to rest up long enough to restore its creative juices. Instead, we'll get two delayed movies while Disney tries adding a different ingredient or two to an exhausted formula and calling it "New."
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